How to Cruise the Men’s Restroom of Love’s Truckstop Outside 29 Palms

By Frederick Speers

Note: this is a choose-your-own-experience poem, so use the hyperlinks to avoid scrolling forever.

1

O god through the gloryhole that man appears     

fit now the opening fills with

a solitary word warm & unpronounceable 

at first like an unfamiliar bloom left 

in the greenhouse for too long & gone

to seed it will      slump there until

you lift its head toward the florescent lights 

like you might with an old man’s face 

the one spotted recently on his front

lawn bowing down as if to ask      the dark clouds

to forgive his wasted life the gathering shame

he must have felt as this cold wind blew through

it bloweth where it listeth 

you know the look you’ve seen it before

in the tinted glass of a parked car in Balboa Park

that tricky kind of absolution 

only the despairing & infirmed dare to ask for

for the grace that can be bestowed only by 

what is absolutely unseen      the unseen 

each of us hopes to believe will one day be 

waiting on just the other side of things 

      do you accept (2) or decline (27)


2

God that would be your cue do not 

leave a guy hanging       hardly grasped 

soon the warm & unpronounceable miracle will 

spill over      throats those hairiest wind instruments 

cleared      & junk will be shoved back into 

briefs a fly soon zips      which means the solitary pact 

between vessel & the invisible is now fulfilled 

hands washing themselves in the funky sink & you know 

O how odd is it that you      get it even before you know 

how to shape the words in your mouth 

that you are never 

to speak of this encounter with anyone else 

just as you know without any authority around 

how you must wait & listen first for the choir 

of door hinges opening their hymnals before 

you yourself can breathe out loud 

get on up & leave (6) 

or sit back down (3)


3

God the interminable waiting & yet 

no one second feels like


the last the multiplicity is 

mind blowing go on waiting some more (4)


4

God you think while kneeling is that      why fags flock 

to becoming men of the cloth when you are born 

into the closet it is an unknown element      the enclosed 

space of your daily life often burning with some 

facet of the divine your always being on fire & ineffable 

plus always having to carry 

your closet around with you like the clearest kind 

of open wound so that your whole life you 

struggle with boundaries 

except when      two closets touch in public like so

this secular sort of confessional forms from either side 

of the divide you pray with all of what has been 

missing inside take it O take

it all wait

    are those footsteps on the tile floor

nowhere to go (5)


5

God get back on your throne & pretend you are texting 

or invisible which people oddly


enough will believe now focus less

on head & more on heady subjects & open your book (6)


6

God dude you have a point there is no reason

to get all religious 

our forefathers that unbroken line of queens who 

came before us now they knew 

how to hunt 

handkerchiefs tucked 

in back pockets & folded 

like the sunset all red yellow or blue waiting to be

spotted though not always quick enough to nab 

their first picks from the meat market      

with bloodshot eyes most excelled 

on bended knee at the stall lips 

poised at the hole’s vanishing point & O 


so patient or when sneaking a peek at your 

neighbor’s goods quiet as monks poring over 

a dusty tome all huddled about the urinal trough 

or while waiting in line 

knowing just when to lock horns 

with another’s knowing look 

wink (7) or turn away (27)


7

God good morning sunshine where am I you 

wonder the Heaven on Earth Bldg you turn 

naked on your side besides what else would you 

put on now other 


than the body that you possess the pose that 

in time will give you up as you feel the well worn 

mystery of stubble from a stranger’s chin 

on your thigh & then this 


overarching sensation of some brother

father lover friend teaching you who we are 

to one another the good sheets tangled up 

while outside the moon


wafer thin looks down from the early morning 

sky the moment carried away with itself

first in the river & then the delta the tide 

later there will come 


brightest whiffs of black coffee everything 

bagels with lox so now what      

stick with not getting what you 

want (1) or try this new tragedy of losing 

what you have now only just got (29) 

8

God I mean where are you not out 

here     the darkness within you 

stills as you      stroll through 



the dark you spot another heading 

your way      do you make a signal (9)  

or carry on through the park (12)


9

God how did we get here the local jail cell of the universe 

halfheartedly you shake the bars of the universe behind you 

others seated on the long bench of the universe 

the toilet of the universe in the corner appears to be made

of stainless steel such furnishings      are not universal 

however there is no window 

of the universe to speak of which is odd

while next to you this drunk fossil 

of the universe dreams aloud as if the cell 

of the universe sliding closed had contained      

within it its 

final opening 

when the walls of the universe will once again 

push equally against themselves 

the iron door of nothing-matters-anymore 

locked tight by anything-is-possible 


Enough you think just look at that guard he is kinda hot 

catch his eye (7) or thumb through your paperback (10)

10

Good now listen hard if

if you’re going to instruct others

on how to live with a chronic illness 

Horace recommends throwing in 

something like cruising you know 


for entertainment purposes 

just desserts for fairies like us 

remember to dazzle they sigh

with talk of who is 

going to die or get lost 

tell us 

yes let us hear 

more about that pansy found 

at the meadow’s edge barely 

touched was

it by the passing of the plow 

also in 

your first part darling instead of cock

go back & make it a flower of some kind 

you are the poet I do not pretend to know 

totally your call

good boy now take your pills & do

not wander off 

take pills (18) wander off (12)


11

God here we are just what are we hanging out 

do do do fffffffff um is there anything good on


12

Go if you want to go then deeper      into the desert of twisted pine 

trust me this time I will not follow       there you will be free to explore 

as you wish & with each snapped twig or clod unsettled 

you will know at least I am not the one sniffing your tail 

instead I will hang back 


& learn the common names of succulents 


Yellow Crown of Thorns Aaron’s Rod

Fairy Tongue Sage of the Desert

Variegated Devil’s Backbone 

Queen of the Night Day Flower


what else could a life spent kneeling suggest 


I am after all your servant Your Homo 

Your Invert & Social Deviant Your Cock


Sucker PillowBiter to be called names 

your whole life is to reckon they hold some 

power yes but what kind 


probe further (17) or change your mind (13)


13

Good now that you are here we can begin all this talk 

of god names & power is boring my friends 

& it misses the point      imagine being you instead 

at the moment you 


find this opening in yourself a hole in

who you are some glorious sweet spot where

you can if you want wait     day in day out 

to see whether who-


you-will-have-been-forever-now-a-part-of 

will happen by whistling a tune or tapping 

a foot meanwhile on the surface of things you

can watch the fresh plot 


thicken feel the bristles on your chin filthy 

enough to come clean each day another bright 

opportunity to have soap bubbles light 

on your hand & look


at them go sing 

to the bubbles now (16) 

or listen to them sing (14)



14

Go on we are listening soap bubbles      

is there anything else you’d say in your defense 

     

. . . . (15)


15

God I guess that’s true 

true enough & enough 

to matter but will it 

be enough the divine 

will it need any shape 

from us not whatever 

is found in stale sermons 

no we are talking clouds 

man clouds clouds in & of

themselves & birds 

yes & people too all 

doing the walk of shame 

down the boulevard & not 

that smug sun from behind 

the scenes of some Heavenly City 

hovering in the skies 

over the sidewalks that fill 

daily with the sad lot of Honey 

Forgive Me I Tried


divinity man that 

case has been stretched beyond

the breaking point because 

from there there are only 

two ways to go either

the endless gospel of 

winging it (24) or the pin 

like scrutiny that comes 

with opening oneself (16)  


16

God opening yourself up on the other hand reveals another

     kind of endlessness no     reed after reed 

encircling the men’s restrooms of the Emerald 

     Necklace you have gone off per usual & I am 

once again stuck with my reflection true face 

     for my faces true eyes for my eyes true 

tongue for my tongues within the filthy ponds I find

     only what is manifest moonlight through mist 

the mist forming now wherever now ripples 

     its form through what is taking place 

     taking me only so far as the surface 


stills when wait there in the dark I hear you call from 

     the other side of you think you are 

you are almost certain it is The Fens in Boston (17) 

otherwise Manhattan’s Central Park (23)

17

God sooner or later you will come 

to tell the difference between the wind 

& your instrument between 

the footprints in the mud that are yours 

& where the mud has merely settled 

for a world without your touch once 

when you were young & impressionable 

a Seventh Day Adventist said

there is always hope for homosexuals 

because it is not an unchangeable condition 

like being black or a woman 

& it hits you then

just how deeply the layers of oppression are 

& all related this hardened 

cross-section of hatred mixed with dirty force

 

Dig deeper (18) or point your 

finger at the whole lot (21)

18

God like after the service remember     how those neighborhood boys 

flew as now their memories do across 

the open fields to makeshift forts along the wooded 

edge of town from the mind 


of your bedroom window watch them now disappear 

with each other for a time in what 

can only be imagined from     a distance to be a secret rendezvous point 

made from Red Maple cinder     blocks & St John’s Wort 


watch them later in life grown men carrying 

the nostalgic shapes of those horny looks 

with them into back rooms cinema 

booths & bathroom stalls wherever can hold 

more than one a parade of anonymous theys

wherever their touching wounds can be hidden from view 


After all that talk of the miraculous man on a cross 

what is boy to do 

take it all in (19) or once again wander off (21)

19

God can you imagine if he exists 

at all he has to be taken in all 

of him like a boss 

                                or not at all love 

is ultimately only made so 

because of contradictions this 


life-giving & all-consuming pit is 

placed graciously at the center of human 

existence without our knowing


compare love to a black hole (9) 

contrast love with a black hole (20)

20

God look man things 

happen unless they don’t

all horizons now are look there

bloody sparkling 

with human faults 

call someone out over

all this mess (21) 

or keep up the charade (25)

21

God bud go fuck yourself that was totally you 

in the Cambridge bird sanctuary last night 

after all the talk of self-restraint there you were 

bud on top of bud 

on top of bud O so it was you I fucking 

called it that forsythia waving all yellow 

like a flame with the male cardinal perched askew 

like a leitmotif 

even this blue dasher pinched in its beak for 

good measure I get it      you were told 

never to look & never to look like this 

so your eyes like mine 


are fixed on becoming the landscape we search 

wherever men are found a new country awaits 

this is some good shit (22) take another hit or 

throw it all away (25)

22

God high though you may be you cannot stop 

texting him

his name that’s absolutely

impossible to pronounce try a different way (23) 

or sound it out the same (25)

23

God at last there you are     come out 

of the Rambles the morning is 

opening now like a morning 

glory it is our work is it not

in the end that keeps open

the opening of the world 

put your heart into it 

put your heart into the opening 

of darkest fires (24) put your heart into 

the opening of moonlit waters (26)

24

Good take it once more from the top this time 

make it last     add some fresh 

kindling to poke your campfire 

picture it living 

only to burn whatever it is not 

with everything it is inside desperate 

to get out of all this longing

 

even as it reaches out 

& whirls back up with 

all of us

faggots 

in a god-filled pit (29)

25

God you know sometimes it’s like I don’t even know 

you      you know some days you feel like this

sly baritone boom among the distant clouds other 

days more like a fuzzy thought in people’s heads 


like when a molar gets pulled 

the lacy pit of

life’s fatigue filling in with this vacant kind 

of bliss like that time you had the whole place 

to yourself on Palm Sunday…

the robes worn & the stories you could tell 

Make way      make way I say 

for the absent father you will never face (29)

26

God take a step back if it is

true that hurricanes are never

defined solely by wind strength 

or by self-destructive 

art but by the presence of 

an eyewall within itself 

that space arising only 

from all the storm is not then

man O man if ever you 

wished to remove that hole in 

your wind-shook heart consider 

not only would you lose

what you call yourself but

also once again all that

you have already lost (29)

27

Go look in the mirror whose face is that 

not a word how long have you been waiting here


on your knees you nod what is one more hour (3) 

or you shout god in heaven what day is today (28)

28

God why keep it going god after god after god 

too many holes already in the god 

argument no together they pool & form 

an even larger hole & so forth so 

relatable      to have no official 

destiny but to desire one endlessly

is that not our fate as well to stop & kneel 

wherever we care to 

locked within the cells of universal selves

waiting to reveal some small part 

to whoever may be beautiful happening by

stopping to catch       a glimpse 

maybe of that elusive serpent’s tail 

while poised there patiently with your

serpent mouth 

but to sin without any god about

damn 

maybe it’s best to stay put (13) or there is time

still to do a loop outside in the dark (8)

29

To let it all go then no strings attached 


only to be filled once more with that empty sound

found within ourselves the muscle made solely to beat 

for whatever is not around      that built in 

beating of ourselves 

for nothing more than more 


Frederick Speers (he/him) is the author of So Far Afield (Nomadic Press), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His forthcoming chapbook, In the Year of Our Making and Unmaking, was selected by Carl Phillips as the winner for the Frontier Poetry contest, published in May 2021. His poems have appeared in AGNI (Online); Crab Creek Review, winner of the 2020 poetry contest, selected by Keetje Kuiper; Diode Poetry Journal; Forklift, Ohio; Impossible Archetype; Ofi Press Magazine; Tahoma Literary Review; Portland Review; The Straddler; and Salamander Magazine. He lives outside Denver, Colorado with his husband and their three dogs. Check out his website: www.frederickspeers.com

Previous
Previous

Ode to 2019

Next
Next

TOP